Posted by Update 1 MAY 16 2005 (4:50PM ET) — Michael Jackson’s defense team is meticulously obliterating testimony from prosecution witnesses including Janet Arvizo and the rest of the family. They are zeroing in on allegations made by the family, and showing the jury that the Arvizos came to court and lied under oath. Russ Birchim is now on the stand and being asked about Ralph Chacon and Kassim Abdool. Breaking news out of the courtroom comes by way of Jennifer London (msnbc). She just reported that one of the bodyguards testified that when he was doing a check of the property, he once caught Gavin Arvizo and his brother in the wine cellar with a half empty bottle of wine. And Jackson was nowhere around. This is exactly the kind of testimony that Tom Mesereau alluded to in his opening statement. So there is now testimony before this jury from an actual witness who walked in on these two inside the wine cellar by themselves. Taking the stand today were a series of witnesses who established that the family wasn’t held hostage, that the mother lied about specific events she testified to under oath, and that the Arvizo children were staying in the guest suites during the time when they claim they were sleeping in Jackson’s room getting molested and witnessing molestation. Some of these witnesses are 3rd party witnesses with absolutely no biases one way or the other. This is something conspicuously lacking in the prosecution’s “case”. One of the allegations made under oath by the mother is that she “invented” a reason for her children to leave Neverland with her, and that one of the those “reasons” was that they needed to see the dentist. So what does the defense do in their case that the prosecution was too afraid to do? They call the dentist that the Arvizo family saw during their alleged “kidnapping”. Jean Seamount testified that the family saw her on Feb 24 2003. She says the mother asked her to remove Gavin Arvizo’s braces because the mother was angry with the orthodontist who put the braces on. According to Seamounts testimony, Janet Arvizo told her that the original orthodontist “wanted more money” when that orthodontist found out where she was. So the mother’s plan was to take the braces off and mail them back to this original orthodontist. From an AP report titled “Jackson defense calls orthodontist to stand”:
“She claimed that once the orthodontist found out who she was he wanted more money,” Seamount testified. Seamount did not testify about any attempt by the mother to indicate she needed help or wanted to escape. Defense attorneys presented a picture of Seamount’s office showing several dental chairs alongside one another in an open setting. (see Jackson defense calls orthodontist to stand)
There was no attempt at an “escape”. Neither one of the family members said anything to this doctor about being held hostage. Neither one of them tried to call the police. Remember, they’re claiming that they were ALL held hostage and threatened. It is lunacy to suggest that they all wouldn’t have said anything in a wide open space had they really been held hostage. Seamount also addressed another issue concerning Gavin Arvizo’s lack of respect for other people’s property. She says the accuser was disrespectful and actually rummaged through her draws, contaminating a number of sterilized materials. More from that AP report:
She testified that boy who is now Jackson’s accuser behaved poorly and went through drawers, forcing her to throw away several sterilized items. Seamount also testified there was no film crew present, as the mother testified, no sign the family was held against their will, and no sign that they were in fear. (see Jackson defense calls orthodontist to stand)
This is go directly to illustrate that Gavin Arvizo particularly would be the kind of person just disrespectful enough to go through Jackson’s private belongings and happen upon things that he shouldn’t be into, like Jackson’s adult material. There were previous reports that some of the people at Neverland actually caught them going through Jackson’s stuff. This testimony also corroborates testimony from Cynthia Bell, who testified that the accuser behaved so terribly on a flight back from Florida to Neverland in early Feb 2003 that it was an embarrassment to have him on-board. Remember the big row about body waxing? Well the defense actually called the body waxer, Carol McCoy to the stand. She testified that Janet Arvizo was there for 4-5 hours and could have left or called the police at any time. McCoy says that unlike what Arvizo testified to under oath, she got a brow wax, leg wax, arm wax, face wax and a bikini wax. She also testified that Arvizo was bragging about how good Jackson was to her family and that she wanted her children to call him “daddy”, which conflicts with a prosecution contention that it was somehow Jackson’s idea for them to call him “daddy”. The defense also called Katie Bernard to the stand. She testified that she actually drove Arvizo to the body wax salon. Apparently, Arvizo never told her either that she or her children were being kidnapped. Jackson’s defense also showed the $140.00 receipt for the body waxing which the accuser’s mother didn’t want to look at when she was being cross-examined by Mesereau earlier in the trial. It would have been completely idiotic to claim that she was being kidnapped anyway when Bernard was freely taking her to the body waxing salon. Maria Gomez also took the stand. She says she also cleaned their guest suites. She testified that their beds had been slept in and were “torn apart”. She also says the Arvizo boys always left their rooms in a complete mess. Gomez’s testimony corroborates testimony by Kiki Fournier who, under cross-examination, testified that the guest suites the Arvizo hell-raisers were assigned to were always a mess. She said they were so bad when she would come to clean it, that she once complained to the house manager about the mess. According to Trace Gallagher (fox), one of the maids in charge of cleaning the rooms also dropped the bombshell that she found some adult magazines in Star Arvizo’s backpack when she was cleaning the guest suite in which they were staying. This could go right to the heart of the defense’s contention that the Arvizos went through Jackson’s personal belongings and took things that didn’t belong to them. On the other hand, it may also mean that they brought their own adult magazines to Neverland, which would corroborate expected testimony from a man named Angel Vivanco who says that he saw the Arvizo brothers in possession of adult material BEFORE Feb 2003. The prosecution is desperately arguing to keep his testimony out. Reportedly, the prosecution isn’t even attempting to cross-examine some of these defense witnesses because their testimony is so straight forward, concise and without bias that there really is nothing they can say against it.